From before, there has been known a medicine dispensing apparatus which includes a plurality of tablet cassettes for containing predetermined types of tablets and is configured to automatically dispense the tablets contained in the tablet cassettes on the basis of prescription data (for example, see patent document 1). In such a type of medicine dispensing apparatus, since types of tablets which can be dispensed from the tablet dispensing apparatus are respectively allocated to the tablet cassettes in advance, a large number of tablet cassettes are required for allowing the medicine dispensing apparatus to deal with a wide various types of tablets. This results in upsizing of the medicine dispensing apparatus.
On the other hand, there has been also known a medicine dispensing apparatus which includes a manual packaging unit for dispensing tablets supplied into a plurality of boxes arranged in a matrix pattern, in units of the boxes (for example, see patent document 1). Since such a type of medicine dispensing apparatus can automatically dispense desired types of tablets in units of boxes with the manual packaging unit, it is possible to deal with a wide various types of tablets without a large number of tablet cassettes.